


Looking Up At the Same Night Sky

by KLStarre



Category: Not Another D&D Podcast (Podcast)
Genre: Beach House, First Kiss, Heart-to-Heart, Hot Boy Summer, M/M, Not Main Campaign, Post-Canon, Speculation, The Mavrus Chronicles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26099761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KLStarre/pseuds/KLStarre
Summary: Mac believes in the sanctity of two bros sitting in silence.(Or, after they rescue Carl, both he and Mac realize some things).
Relationships: Carl/Cormac "Mac" Darkstout
Comments: 19
Kudos: 60





	Looking Up At the Same Night Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meathermac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meathermac/gifts).



“Dude, how do you do it?” Mac asks, when Mavrus and Dave are asleep and Tred is up in his and Mavrus’s room plucking pensively at his guitar strings and Carl’s been back for only three days but everything already is more centered, more balanced. The TV is on but not set to any channel, and the snow that flickers across it illuminates Carl’s face on the other couch. They’re on separate couches because all five of them had been down here, earlier, but now it’s just the two of them and the space feels too big.

“Do what?” Carl glances over at him, looking up from where he’s crocheting – Mac can’t tell what it is he’s making, but his hands dart quickly and assuredly. He keeps moving the hook even as he meets Mac’s eyes.

“Calm them down, man. When you weren’t here, everyone was, like, fighting all the time. Over _sunglasses_ or whatever. Dave tried to tell me that I told him that all beer was good beer and I had to fuckin’ sidebar with him about it.”

“You did _not_ have to sidebar about that,” Carl says, pausing his crocheting for a second to laugh. He closes his eyes as he does, head thrown back, and it’s fucking stupid but Mac can’t help but trace his gaze along the curve of his horns as he does, light bouncing off of parts of them, the rest covered in shadow. They’re just straight, not like Tred’s or Mavrus’s weird curves.

“Yeah, _right_ ,” he scoffs, momentarily distracted by the idea that he could let an idea that awful stand. His entire reputation would be ruined if it got out that he’d said that all beer was good beer, even if he hadn’t, because it _wasn’t_. “And let it get back to my parents? Absolutely not.”

“Your parents would love to hear it, dude.” Carl starts crocheting again, but more slowly, like he’s trying to pay closer attention to Mac. Or maybe like something else. Mac doesn’t know. And he sure as fuck doesn’t know why he suddenly cares. Is Carl making a hat?

“Yah, bro, I _know_. That’s the _problem_.”

Carl laughs again, quietly so as not to disturb the other boys, but full body. Mac is – he’s used to being laughed at, that’s just the kind of relationship the Bons Fréres have, which is totally fine, _obviously_ , but it doesn’t feel like Carl’s laughing at him. Carl just has that kind of aura, that he’s laughing with you, not at you. Such an incredibly solid dude.

They settle into silence, Mac not feeling quite right about changing the channel, until he realizes that Carl had never answered his question. “You didn’t answer me,” he says, and it’s too loud. Mac is a firm believer in the sanctity of two bros sitting in silence, in the ritual of chilling after watching your friends drink far too much, in the way that being awake long enough to start to sober up can be its own kind of holy.

Above them, there is the distinct sound of something smashing from Tred and Mavrus’s room, followed by indecipherable yelling. Mac and Carl glance at each other, and then stand up at the same time, Carl carefully placing his crocheting on the coffee table. It _really_ looks like a hat, is the thing.

The two of them step out the front door, Carl holding it for Mac, and out onto the deck as Tred and Mavrus’s shouting gets muffled behind them. Dave is probably still asleep – he’s impossible to wake up, even when he’s not in an alcohol induced stupor. The porch faces the mountains, so they can’t see the ocean, but they can hear it, crashing against the shore. It’s too rough to swim in, usually, with too many sharp rocks, but the other night they’d dared Dave to jump off an outcropping and he’d done it, almost getting pulled out to sea before managing to swim back and collapse on the beach, exhausted. Mostly they just skimboard, or throw frisbees, or pelt open cans of beer at each other until someone, usually Tred, gets hit too hard in the head and complains and they have to stop.

Mac leans against the railing and Carl joins him, much closer than he had been inside. He’s warm against the ocean breeze.

“You asked how I do it?”

Mac nods, and then realizes that Carl’s not looking at him, but rather out and up, at the stars. “Yeah, man.”

“I don’t think I do anything. If I’m honest, I think you’re the one holding everyone together.”

Mac barks out a laugh that echoes up, bouncing off the peaks. “Yeah, _right_. It was fucking chaos when you were gone. I was trying, but I was freaking out, man, and so were the rest of them.”

“I have a hard time believing Mavrus cared all that much.” Carl does look at him as he says this, and Mac is very grateful for the way his beard hides his mouth twitching up in a smile. Because Carl’s _right_ , Mavrus really hadn’t particularly given a shit. Mavrus very rarely gives a shit.

“Maybe it means something,” Carl continues, once it becomes clear that Mac doesn’t have an answer.

“What?” Mac is playing absentmindedly with his necklace, lets his gaze drift to the hollow of Carl’s throat, realizes that he hasn’t given him his, yet. Senses that now is not the time to go inside and get it.

“That you feel like I calm everything down and I feel like you hold everything together. And the rest of them don’t seem to notice either way.”

As if on cue, there’s another shattering from Tred and Mavrus’s room, a shouting about how _that’s my bed, Mavrus, why’d you put your fucking soaking wet shoes on it_ and Carl’s _right_ , it is hard to reconcile the idea that this is any sort of calmer, or more balanced. But Mac _feels_ calmer. He’d been so aware of how aggro he was being when they were looking for Carl, and now that they’ve gotten him back, he hasn’t yelled at anyone once. Well, _once_ , but Mavrus had absolutely deserved it, so it barely even counts.

“What do you think it means?” Mac asks, which is a stupid question, because he _knows_ what it means, he knows there’s a reason he stares at Carl’s horns and closes his eyes to listen to him when he laughs and sidebars with him more than any of the others. But he’s not going to _say_ that.

“I had a lot of time to think, while I was trapped on an island in a weird bachelorette party,” Carl starts, turning to face him fully. “And I think it means – ” He pauses. “I want to make some cool romantic gesture, but I think consent is super important. So, I think it means: is it okay if I kiss you, man?”

Oh. _Oh_. The feeling in Mac’s stomach right now is like the first time he’d had a Bastard’s Cove Black Rye, nearly impossible to obtain – perfect, but also just a little woozy. “Yeah,” is all he manages to get out, and then Carl _is_.

Mac doesn’t even process how much Carl must be bending down before he’s reaching up and wrapping one hand around Carl’s horn, the other around his waist, and Carl is a _good_ kisser, of course he is, he’s good at fucking everything, but mostly what Mac’s focused on is how he’s kissing _him_ , not the quality of it, not how soft his lips are, just how close they are, how maybe Carl really _is_ crocheting him a beanie, how Mac is so easily pissed off but when he’s with Carl it’s like everything slows down.

Carl pulls away, eventually, too soon, and while Mac is still trying to catch his breath, Carl smiles. “I think it means that.”


End file.
